We’ve launched a new segment on Radio Heartland called Classic Americana. Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, we’ll pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

You might not know the name Elizabeth Cotten right away, but you know her songs: They've been covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Pete Seger, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Taj Mahal, and Valerie June, to name just a few.

Elizabeth Cotten was born on January 5, 1893 — some sources say 1895 — near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her family members were very much into music, and the first instrument she picked up was her brother's banjo. When she discovered guitar as an 11-year-old, she started cleaning houses for 75 cents a month so she could save the $3.75 it cost to buy a Stella guitar from a local dry-goods store.

Once Cotten bought that guitar, she developed her unique picking style, which she called "Cotten picking," a style that involved playing the alternating bass line with the index and middle fingers and the melody with her thumb — a style Cotten developed because she held her guitar left-handed and upside down. Cotten soon got started writing songs: in her early teens, she wrote the song "Freight Train," inspired by the sound of the train that passed near her home.

Cotten married at age 15 —not uncommon in the early 20th century — and put music aside to raise her kids. Unfortunately, hers was not a pleasant marriage, but Cotten was able to divorce her husband in 1940. She got work in a department store in Washington D.C., and it was there that Cotten happened to meet Ruth Crawford Seeger: When one of the Seeger girls got lost in the department store, Cotten reunited mother and daughter, and within a month, Cotten got a job working in the Seeger home.

This turned out to be a springboard to launch Elizabeth Cotten's musical career. Ruth Seeger was a composer and music teacher, and her husband Charles was an expert in folk music. Their son, Pete, as we all know, was a performing musician. 

One day, a few years after Elizabeth Cotten began working for the Seegers, the family heard Cotten playing guitar and they became immediate fans. They started recording Cotten’s songs, and her music career began in earnest. Her first album was released in 1958, when Cotten was in her mid-60s.

Elizabeth Cotten toured throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, and in 1984, at around age 90, Cotten won a Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for Elizabeth Cotten Live!

That same year, she was honored with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. 

Elizabeth Cotten died in 1987 at about 94 years of age. She was a huge influence on a lot of artists, including Bob Dylan and Doc Watson, and she continues to be influential. In the year 2019, Elizabeth Cotten was posthumously inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. 

On Radio Heartland, we’ll spotlight Elizabeth Cotten’s song "Shake Sugaree"; this recording features Cotton on guitar, and her granddaughter, Brenda Evans, on lead vocals.

External Link

Elizabeth Cotten – Smithsonian Folkways website